The capital, Ankara, some 250 miles from Istanbul, also was affected. The outage extended to 45 of Turkey's 81 provinces.

The semiofficial Anadolu Agency quoted Energy Minister Taner Yildiz as saying the cause of the outage was unknown. Yildiz, speaking during a visit to Slovakia, said he could neither confirm nor deny that a cyberattack had triggered the blackout, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Flightradar24, which maps real-time flight data on the Internet, tweeted that the outage was "affecting flights," and said 11 of its 16 air traffic monitoring systems receivers -- as distinct from the country's air traffic control system -- were not working.

The Turkish Electricity Transmission Co. blamed the outage on a problem with transmission lines, Anadolu Agency reported. The utility said an investigation was in progress, as were efforts to restore power, the news agency said.

The outage began at 10:36 a.m. (3:36 a.m. ET). Nearly two hours later, according to Anadolu Agency, about 15% of the power had been restored to Istanbul and Ankara, including in some subway stations. Power also was beginning to flow again to a number of provinces that had been cut off, the agency reported.

By midafternoon, Yildiz said, 90% of Istanbul's power had been restored.

"Crowded places such as metro stations have been given electricity, and we believe the rest of the country should be fully powered shortly," he said.

Prosecutor taken hostage

Also Tuesday, a prosecutor in a controversial case was reportedly taken hostage by armed men at a courthouse in Istanbul.

Mehmet Selim Kiraz was assigned to the case of Berkin Elvan, a 15-year-old boy who was injured during the anti-government Gezi Park protests in June 2013.

The teen died the following March after having spent nine months in a coma. The case, with its overtones of possible police overreaction, has been politically contentious, just as the protests themselves were.

The prosecutor was taken hostage around 12:30 p.m. Turkish time in his office on the sixth floor of the Caglayan district courthouse, Anadolu Agency reported.

Police evacuated that floor of the building, the agency reported. Snipers were deployed, it said.

The agency said that two gunshots were heard as officers tried to get into the prosecutor's office, but it is not known whether anyone was hurt.

Negotiations between the gunmen and authorities were reported to have followed.

An explosion, followed by sounds of more gunshots, could be heard coming from the courthouse Tuesday evening, hours after the situation began. Smoke emanated from the building; the consequences of those sounds weren't immediately clear.

The Birmingham, Alabama, mom made them write an apology note, but she didn't know who should get it.

That's why Wood posted a plea on her local community's closed Facebook page on Saturday to track down the woman, according to CNN affiliate WMBA.

The Jefferson County's Sheriff's Office reposted her note the same night, and the post has been liked more than 250,000 times.

"My son later told me, much to my humiliation and embarrassment, that my girls were rude and obnoxious during the movie. The woman I'm looking for addressed them and asked them to be quiet and they were disrespectful," Wood wrote on her Facebook post.

"After the movie she approached my girls and told them that her husband had been laid off and this was the last movie she would be able to take her daughter to for a while and my girls ruined that for her," wrote Wood, who asked the woman to contact her. "This rude, disrespectful, and awful behavior is unacceptable and they owe you an apology."

Wood promised that her daughters would pay for another movie for the family out of their allowance.

The woman Wood was trying to reach is Rebecca Boyd, who saw the sheriff's department post and contacted her.

"The note from their mom brought me to tears and shows there is still good people in the world," Boyd wrote on the sheriff's department Facebook page. "I have no hard feelings towards them and I am proud of their parents. The girls are not not bad...they are children. Glad they are learning a lesson. I hope if my teenagers are out and they act up...I hope someone says something to them."

Wood called Boyd the real hero of the story. "She took it upon herself to correct my girls and nobody else did."

"She's the most gracious and kind and forgiving woman. I am so humbled by that."

Now international airlines are finding it hard to fill planes to and from Russia and many are slashing their flights.

EasyJet said Tuesday it will cut the number of flights to Russia by half this summer, after it had already reduced its service from London to Moscow in January.

The British budget airline said the move was a "response to the reduction in demand to and from Russia in recent months."

Russian tourists have been hit by the collapse of the ruble. The currency lost over 40 percent against the dollar in the last six months, pushing the cost of international holiday up for Russians.

Russia's relationship with the West has suffered a huge blow over Moscow's involvement in the crisis in Ukraine.

Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency said international traffic was down 14.5% in January and February.

EasyJet is the latest airline to cut down on its Russia services. Cathay Pacific, a Hong Kong based airline, canceled its flights to Moscow last week, the Moscow Times reported. And Qatar Airways also cut down on capacity on its flights to Russia.

Etihad Airways, another Gulf carrier, scrapped its plans for a Boeing Dreamliner service between Abu Dhabi and Moscow, and slashed the number of its flights to Russia by a third.

Smaller European airlines such as German Berlin Air and Finnish Finnair also canceled flights to various Russian cities.

Russian airlines are also rethinking their strategy. The air transport agency said Russian airlines withdrew 72 destinations from their schedules due to the declining number of passengers.

The Russian government introduced a number of measures aimed at boosting domestic tourism. It has cut tax from 18% to 10% for airlines operating domestic flights and encouraged state-owned corporations to subsidize domestic vacations for their employees.

The strategy seemed to work -- Russian airlines reported 12.4% growth in domestic passengers in the first two months of the year.

Taken on a cell phone, the video "was so chaotic that it was hard to identify people, but the sounds of the screaming passengers made it perfectly clear that they were aware of what was about to happen to them," according to the French magazine Paris Match, which obtained the video along with the German newspaper Bild.

"One can hear cries of 'My God' in several languages. Metallic banging can also be heard more than three times, perhaps of the pilot trying to open the cockpit door with a heavy object. Towards the end, after a heavy shake, stronger than the others, the screaming intensifies. Then nothing," Paris Match reports.

The two publications described the video but did not post the video itself.

Lufthansa, meanwhile, announced that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz told told his Lufthansa flight training school in 2009 that he had a "previous episode of severe depression."

The airline is sharing that information and documents -- including training and medical records -- with public prosecutors.

Authorities have said Lubitz purposely crashed Flight 9525 into the French Alps on March 24, killing all 150 people aboard.

His girlfriend knew he had psychological issues but "did not know the extent of the problems," a European government official briefed on the investigation into last week's crash told CNN on Tuesday.

The girlfriend told investigators the couple were working through the issues together and "were optimistic" they could solve the problems; she was just as surprised as everyone else by what he did to the plane, the source says.

The girlfriend also told investigators Lubitz had seen an eye doctor and a neuropsychologist, both of whom deemed him unfit to work recently and concluded he had psychological issues, according to the source.

Lubitz complained about vision problems; the eye doctor diagnosed a psychosomatic disorder and gave him an "unfit for work" note, the source said.

Investigators are looking into whether Lubitz feared his medical condition would cause him to lose his pilot's license, the source said, adding that while flying was "a big part of his life," it's only one theory being considered.

Another source, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, told CNN earlier Tuesday that authorities believe the primary motive for Lubitz to bring down the plane was that he feared he would not be allowed to fly because of his medical problems.

Too stressed?

Lubitz told the neuropsychologist that he was too stressed with work, the European government official briefed on the investigation said.

The official said he was not aware of any suicidal tendencies reported by Lubitz to the doctors, but that investigators believe he was suicidal.

Airline officials have said that if Lubitz went to a doctor on his own, he would have been required to self-report if deemed unfit to fly.

The European government official also reiterated that German media tabloid reports that the girlfriend is pregnant or had major personal problems are all speculation and rumor.

The girlfriend and the co-pilot had not, as was widely reported by some media, broken up the day before the crash, the source said.

Official: Lubitz had suicidal tendencies

Earlier, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Dusseldorf, Germany, said Lubitz suffered from suicidal tendencies at some point before his aviation career.

Investigators have not found any writings or conversations where Lubitz shared his motives or confessed to any plans, prosecutor's spokesman Christoph Kumpa said.

However, medical records reveal that Lubitz was suicidal at one time and underwent psychotherapy. This was before he ever got his pilot's license, Kumpa said.

Kumpa emphasized there's no evidence suggesting Lubitz was suicidal or acting aggressively before the crash.

The prosecutor's office confirmed what some media outlets had reported about doctors deeming Lubitz unfit to fly, though there were no physical illnesses found.

Recovery efforts continue

While investigators search for clues to Lubitz's motivation, recovery workers continue the grim task of searching for the remains of those killed in the March 24 crash.

Lt. Col. Jean-Marc Menichini, Gendarmerie spokesman for the Provence-Alpes-Cotes d'Azur region, told CNN on Tuesday that a new path has been completed linking Le Vernet, a nearby community, to the mountainous ravine where the plane's debris is scattered.

It will be used by rescue teams to access the area, he said.

Capt. Yves Naffrechoux, also of the Gendarmerie unit, said Monday that the 1-kilometer path would cut down on the time it takes to reach the crash site considerably.

The trip will now take 30 minutes from Seyne-les-Alps, the staging post for the operation, with less walking involved and thus less fatigue, but also with fewer risks than helicopter transfers.

Two helicopters are still working in case weather conditions improve and allow them to fly, Menichini said.

The remains of at least 78 people on board the plane have been identified so far using DNA analysis.

Naffrechoux warned Monday that "it may not be possible to find the human remains of all the 150 passengers, as some of them may have been pulverized by the crash."

But French President Francois Hollande, speaking alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, was more positive, saying that it should be possible to identify all the victims by the end of the week.

A simple stone memorial has been set up at Le Vernet, where grieving relatives of those killed have laid flowers and held prayers.

The opening of the road, which must still be paved, will eventually allow family members also to reach the spot where their loved ones died.

Authorities say there are some 26 families of six different nationalities in the area Tuesday.

However, Patricia Willaert, head of the Alpes de Haute-Provence district, told reporters that Lubitz's family was not among those to have come since the crash.

"There had been some rumors, but they have not come to the site," she said. "The family of the co-pilot has not come. We have no knowledge of information informing us of that."

Willaert said some 450 people close to the victims had already traveled to the area, with more expected to come during the Easter weekend.

"The priority has been to welcome them in the best possible way," she said. She praised the mobilization of local citizens, who spontaneously offered 2,000 beds to accommodate the victims' families.

German investigators and French criminal investigators are due to work together at the crash site Wednesday, Dusseldorf police said.

Medical record emerging

Much attention has focused on Lubitz's state of mind, with suggestions that he may have had mental health issues.

Lubitz, 27, passed his annual pilot recertification medical examination in summer 2014, a German aviation source told CNN. He had started working as a commercial pilot in 2013, said Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings.

An official with Lufthansa said that the exam only tests physical health, not psychological health.

It's unknown if Lubitz mentioned his problems on a form that asks yes-or-no questions about physical and mental illness, suicide attempts and medications. European pilots must fill out the form to be recertified.

Federal aviation authorities, not the airline, issue the form. The form is privileged information, and Lufthansa never sees a pilot's completed form, an airline representative said.

The airline would only get a "clear to fly" notice from the aviation doctors alerting the airline that a pilot has completed recertification.

Safety investigation

France's accident investigation agency, the BEA, said Tuesday that the ongoing safety investigation was focusing on a more detailed analysis of the flight history leading up to the crash, based on the audio recovered from the cockpit voice recorder and any other available data.

BEA spokeswoman Martine Del Bono told CNN: "A deliberate act by a man with a disturbed psychological profile is a possible scenario. The first step of the investigation is to describe more precisely what happened."

This will be based mainly on analysis of the cockpit voice recorder, to be supplemented by data from the flight data recorder if it is found, she said.

"But we will also look at other events with possibly similar scenarios, try to understand if there are systemic weaknesses which may contribute or facilitate such scenarios.

"We will in particular look at the cockpit door locking as well as the criteria and procedures applied to detect specific psychological profiles."

Lufthansa said in a statement Tuesday that it was canceling its 60th anniversary celebrations, planned for April 15.

Instead, the company will provide a live broadcast for its employees of an official state ceremony to be held April 17 in Cologne Cathedral for bereaved families and friends to remember the victims, it said.